Little did ancient people suspect that the garbage they discarded would one day be resurrected by these scientific rag-and-bone merchants.

"Archaeology is rather like a vast, fiendish jigsaw puzzle invented by the devil as an instrument of tantalizing torment, since you don't know how many pieces are missing." "It takes very special qualities to devote one's life to problems with no attainable solutions and to poking around in dead people's garbage: words like 'nosy', 'masochistic' and 'completely batty' spring readily to mind. This is why eccentricity is a hallmark of the profession." "Archaeology is an ideal subject in which to become an accomplished bluffer because much of the evidence is so patchy that anyone's guess is as valid as anyone else's. People tend to think that archaeologists spend all their time digging. In fact, not all of them dig, and only a few dig all the time. The bluffer should explain condescendingly that processing and analysing the finds usually takes far longer than the excavation itself, which is therefore just the foreplay, the preliminary stage: the means to an end, not an end in itself." "Diggers—undergraduates, local convicts or civilian volunteers—are the cannon fodder, usually providing all the sweaty labour and kept in a state of blissful ignorance about what they are doing and why. Amazingly, some even pay money to be treated this way. Their basic task often appears to be to move dirt from one place to another, occasionally sieving it into different sizes before dumping it." "Most archaeologists will wax lyrical about their passion for the past. Don't believe a word of it: as a good bluffer you should be able to recognize self-serving nonsense at 20 paces."

Handbuch/übergreifende Darstellung - Grossbritannien/Irland - Popularisierung/Belletristik.

The Bluffer's Guide to Archaeology, by celebrated wit and relentless digger Dr Paul Bahn, will instantly equip readers with all the knowledge they need to pass as experts in the world of ancient peoples and their cultures. Know everything it is necessary to know about disinterred human history, quickly and painlessly.

A snappy little book containing facts, jargon, and inside information--all that readers need to know to hold their own among the experts.

With more than 50 years of field experience between the two authors, this highly regarded volume reveals how responsible archaeologists locate, excavate, and analyze sites, middens, and remains. This second edition contains new, emended, and greatly expanded chapters about recently discovered sites and the development of sophisticated technologies to record and analyze their contents more rapidly and efficiently. The volume also showcases new dating techniques and methods in excavation, preservation, and curation.